Serpent Tongue
by sarika
Summary: Chavvah was the first woman born of man and woman, child of Adam and Eve. She witnessed the death of one brother and the banishment of the other. Her words are cursed because her words killed. A retelling, R&R. Rated 14A.
1. Prologue

**Serpent Tongue**

**Summary-- **Chavvah was the first woman born of man and woman, child of Adam and Eve. She witnessed the death of one brother and the banishment of the other. Her words are cursed because her words killed. Rated 14A for violence and theme. Reviews welcome.

**Author's note--** This is basically a re-write of a previous story that I did on the subject. Since the events in Genesis, before the flood especially, are so vague when it comes to actual historical placement, the historical details in this story may be altered or vague as well. I will try my best to match research with theme with Scripture (as well as with fiction). This is also posted on my Fictionpress account.

**Prologue--**

"Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand."  
--Genesis 4:11, NIV

I was the first to kill Abel. I killed him with words and Cain killed him with sticks and stones. We never meant to do the things we did, but I discovered that it was no use hiding under the shadow of my ignorance for He was always watching. I taunted my brother in the field and I whispered curses into his ear as he slept. Sly serpent now crippled by the heel of God and conscience— I was the first to kill Abel.

"Abel, wake up!" I screamed, my fingers tracing the red marks on his chest, the marks my own nails had left behind. I drove a sharp piece of flint into his arm, just to see if he would yelp in pain. But Abel would not move. My gaze drifted over to the rock beside his head, the one that had struck him hard in the temple. It was not by the rock alone that caused him to lie this way but by Cain's hand.

Abel's face, a heap of blank stone. I was confused— why would he not move? Cain scattered dirt over his wounds, attempting to cover up the crimson that spilled forth from his flesh and into the hungry earth. But this did not fool the flies for they came anyway.

Cain had seen beasts die in the field and I had seen my share of blood. Animals would lie so still, sprawled and broken upon the earth. Their flesh would slowly turn to mud and dust and they would disappear. But Abel was not an animal. He was merely sleeping, I decided, just sleeping— a child content in Mother's arms. He would wake up again.

We searched for an explanation but found none. Cain's lips were pursed with worry and frightened tears washed the dirt from his face. I assured him repeatedly that it was not our fault for rocks could not kill and we could not die. But Cain ignored me—he never ignored me— and pushed me aside, running across the field and down to the river to wash his hands.

Blackest night could not even spare me from the images that plagued my mind. Often I would dream of a severed tongue resting upon my palm. It writhed and moved in vain, trying to escape, its movements ceasing to none at all. It wasn't until I tried to speak that I realized that it was _my _tongue and it was black, cold between my teeth.

"Chavvah, Chavvah, why did you do it?" God asks me from inside my head. I know it is _He_ and His voice is not angry nor is it harsh in its tone. It is a voice filled with sorrow— Adam, my father, when he discovered Abel in the field, or Cain when he realized the field was barren and denied him the fruit of his trade. My hands fly to my ears in a foolish attempt to rid my mind of sound. "Chavvah, Chavvah, _why_?"

I had wept bitterly, my face pressed again the merciless earth. I did not speak because I could not. It was my curse. Cain wandered the lonely world and I was denied a voice.

The sun disappears behind me as I sit here by the river. The dim expanse fades to black and I lay myself down to sleep again, facing the east where my brother fled. Little Seth holds my hand as my mother watches from the cavern. To Eve, he is Abel, but to me, he is Cain and I love him so.

I was one brother's joy and the other's sorrow. I was the first woman born of man and woman and they forgot me. My name means 'breath' and yet I took breath away— breath that was God's and not my own. God made me mute and so my story went unheard. Tongues of vicious flame, I am brighter in the dark. And perhaps my words would be heard after all.

**Author's note-- **The name 'Eve' is supposedly derived from the Hebrew name 'Chavvah', which means 'breath'.


	2. II The Arrival of Abel

**Chapter I-- The Arrival of Abel**

Cain was a slender boy, with dark hair and narrow, glaring eyes. He was handsomer than his father—though there was no other man or boy to compare him to. Adam was a large man, sculpted in all of earth's roughness, like any first of masterpieces. In truth, Cain bore the sullenness of his mother, Eve, though not her meekness. His being the firstborn of my mother and father meant that he was not rebuked in his frequent mischief. Good Abel was the product of my father's wisdom, but Eve would never even slap any of her children.

My older brother was often rough with me when we played together by the river. He would pull at my hair and throw stones at me until I wept. I returned his hurts with bitter words and childish insults that made him laugh at me. But when the sun went down, and it was time for us to return home, he would take my hand and tell me stories—stories often too crude for my ears but I giggled at them anyway. I think Cain was the first storyteller, but it was I who learned to weave my words together, even inventing some of my own, so that they told stories that poured like water into one's ear.

The sky was dark the day of Abel's birth. The clouds were low with the threat of early rain and a chill had cut through my garments. I could hear the water rushing between the stones at the riverbank, coaxed into restlessness by the wind. My mother cried out and stumbled against the wall of our cavern. She pointed to a reed basket on the ground and motioned for me to retrieve it.

I remembered when my mother took me down to the river to gather up the reeds that grew at the river's edge. We pulled them up or cut the stalks with a flint blade. I cut my hand with it and Eve hastily dipped my hand into the murky water, surprising me with a sympathetic frown. We then laid the reeds out on the pebbles, in straight lines, underneath the hot sun.

When we returned home, my mother took the thinnest of the reeds and began to twist and arrange them upon her lap. I watched from her feet as a basket took form beneath her calloused hands. When she was finished, she lined the inside with a fresh fur and set the basket aside.

When my mother had begun to feel the pains in her belly, Cain was showing me how to draw on the walls with pieces of charcoal he had collected from an old fire. He had gone from the cave with blackened hands to find my father, who had started to plough the field, and I abandoned my art to help my mother.

Abel was born at the dawn of the next day, just when the rain had begun to fall.

Abel's incessant crying made me invisible. Though my mother was quick to send me to mind my little brother, I had become invisible. "Abel" was all I ever heard from her lips, and I preferred her silence. My father, though he took great pride in his newest son, escaped to the field to be with the bellowing oxen and the squawking crows rather than stay at our cavern with the echo of a baby's cry in his ears.

Only Cain really saw me—even when Abel's arrival deemed him too old for play and he declined with a scowl whenever I would plead for a game. Even my pretty tears could not coax a boyish grin from him.

But Cain did not become so cold with me. When my mother had fallen asleep with Abel's basket in her lap, Cain snatched up my hand and took me down to the river. The rain had ceased to a drizzle and then it stopped so that the river became smooth again. I thrust my hand immediately into the water to splash my brother, giggling gleefully for I had not had the opportunity to tease him for so long. But Cain twisted my hand upwards and hissed my mischief to a halt. I cried out and stuck out my lower lip in a pout.

"Wait, Chavvah!" he ordered fiercely. I shook my head stubbornly, wishing to slap him for thwarting my fun. But his face bore a solemness I did not recognize and I relaxed my lips and suppressed my childish grudge to listen.

The water had calmed—the wind had stopped breathing—and Cain lowered his hand in front of him so that it hovered over the river's surface.

I was bemused, wanting to turn back but not wishing to run back to my mother. Cain, who hardly knew how to be gentle, gathered my curls at the back of my neck and pushed my head over the water.

"What are you doing?" I whined, prying his fingers from my hair and pouting all over again.

Suddenly Cain became as silent as Eve, his lips pursed the way they did when he was worried. He pointed to the water before us, whispering that I should not breath so heavily or I might cause the water to ripple.

"Look," he said quietly, holding my head with both his hands now.

I stared into the water. My nose almost touched the surface and Cain was holding my hair back. He had brought me to an area of water so clean that I could see the tiny shadows of fish darting smoothly beneath the surface.

"Do you see it?" he asked almost excitedly.

I had never seen a surface so smooth before, so transparent, so baffling. In all my years of play, I had not taken the time to be patient. I had never let the river calm around me. Even Cain was in awe at the things he saw.

"Is that me?" I breathed, reaching out to touch the dirtied face that appeared before me, the features quavering a little as the river slowly submitted again to the wind. Cain slapped my hand away.

"No!" he cried desperately, staring still at his own reflection—and mine. He stuck out his tongue and I wrinkled my nose. The faces we had only caught brief glimpses of before were suddenly very real. A stranger's face beside my brother's own, each face not so unlike the other. We shared the same eyes, the same mouth. But while Cain's features were straighter, sharper, mine were smoother—and fragile, like I could break. I looked like my mother.

I was not invisible anymore. I had a face, and I invented curses for the wind as it distorted my reflection to swirls and ripples, and for the rain because it cried dents upon it.

Cain was content now that he had shared his discovery and he took me home again to where my mother presented me with the reed basket, merely frowning at me for disappearing—and I was secretly glad she had noticed my absence.

From then on, I noticed when Adam nodded his approval at me when I had returned from the river with skins of water, and when Eve showed a bit of a smile when I hummed the songs of the wind to my baby brother. I noticed when Cain looked at me—even when I had also outgrown our days of play. But I knew he had always seen me.

**Author's note-- **I'm really excited to be working on this again! I hope people will continue to lend me their opinions. Thank you to those who reviewed. I'm especially interested to know what you think of the characters. And a little fun fact—Abel's name also means 'breath' (apparently derived from the Hebrew name, 'Hevel').


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